Restored monumental artworks reveal the layers of a city repeatedly built over its own past.
ROME, ITALY
Rome has inaugurated a new museum at the Baths of Trajan, providing public access to two exceptional works of ancient Roman art: the Great Mosaic and the fresco known as the Painted City. Both were discovered in an underground gallery during excavations on the Oppian Hill, near the Colosseum, and have undergone extensive restoration.
The Painted City is a first-century fresco covering approximately ten square metres. It depicts a fortified maritime city from an elevated perspective, with towers, temples, public spaces and densely arranged buildings. Archaeologists have not determined whether the image represents a real Roman port or an idealised urban landscape, but its architectural detail gives it considerable artistic and documentary value.
The monumental wall mosaic, known as The Muse and the Philosopher, includes human figures, theatrical imagery and an elaborate harbour scene. The surviving decoration extends across a vast underground wall and may be the largest partially preserved Roman wall mosaic ever discovered. Excavation remains incomplete, meaning its full dimensions and original function have yet to be established.
Both artworks belonged to structures predating the baths and reflect Rome’s complex archaeological stratification. Designed by Apollodorus of Damascus and inaugurated under Emperor Trajan in AD 109, the bath complex occupied approximately 60,000 square metres. It included bathing rooms, porticoes and spaces for exercise, education, culture and leisure, while incorporating earlier buildings connected to the area of Nero’s Domus Aurea.
The restoration formed part of the PNRR–Caput Mundi programme and also improved the large exedra and underground access route. Visitors will initially enter in groups limited to 15 people during weekend trial openings beginning on September 12 and 13. Conservators will monitor humidity and environmental changes before authorities consider allowing broader access.
Opening the museum before excavation is complete creates a careful balance between public access and archaeological preservation. The site does not present Roman history as a finished collection of objects. Instead, visitors encounter an active investigation in which restoration, interpretation and discovery continue simultaneously beneath the modern city.
History does not disappear; it waits to be uncovered.